Hi Gabrielle, I apologize for the delay in responding to your question, and hope by now you're happily baking sourdough bread. Once the starter begins to rise predictably with the once a day feedings and the 2:1:1 ratio, then it's important to begin feeding twice a day. This is because once the wild yeast kicks in, it will become more active when fed more often. You were right to be concerned about your starter peaking so early and then sitting for many hours in a collapsed state. Ideally you want to refresh your starter when it's at that peak of rising (or just as its beginning to fall) in order to keep the yeast active. Allowing the starter to fall completely will end up making the yeast more sluggish. Since your starter is rising and falling fairly rapidly, you can adjust your feeding routine to slow things down a bit (so you don't end up feeding three times a day) by offering your starter larger feedings. For example, you could try a ratio of 1:2:2, or even 1:3:3 by weight. Gradually shifting over to feeding with unbleached AP flour should also slow things down a bit, since whole grain flour tends to ferment more quickly than white flour. Once you're seeing your starter rise predictably with the AP flour (even if you're feeding with a different ratio of ingredients than 1:1:1), your stater can be considered mature and ready to start baking sourdough bread. We don't set much store in the float test, so consider your starter "ripe" and ready to add to your bread recipe when it's reached its peak of rising, or is just beginning to fall, after having been fed at room temperature. I hope this helps! Let us know how it's going. 

Barb

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